In any company, success on the markets in the face of competition is based on many coordinated actions relating to structure, organisation and governance, positions, skills and their improvement, the various processes, internal coordination, etc.
In the high-tech B2B/B2G company, particular complexities may arise:
- Very technical culture
- Need to coordinate multiple technical actors with business actors
- Difficulty in defining and positioning marketing
- Project dynamics, etc.
Some of these complexities can be attempted, particularly in B2B/B2G companies. The classic distinction between structure and organisation will be adopted for this purpose.
Structure
In terms of structure, B2B/B2G companies are generally structured according to a business and product or product line logic. The importance of technology means that they are rarely structured according to a market logic.
The main structural complexities arise from the need to pool research (generally positioned centrally) and some of the elements of the offerings, components or building blocks for example, which may be used in different areas. For example, who should be responsible for the technical roadmap of an element used in several products or offers sold on different markets to different customers but with different evolutionary requirements depending on the market or type of customer?
Still on the subject of structure, the positioning and scope of the various players in the product competition market, as well as the associated job definitions, are often debated. While it is generally clear that research must be pooled at central level, some questions are frequently asked:
- Should product development be attached to research, which is then called R&D, or should it be attached to a technical department or to strategy, given its vital importance within the overall strategy?
- What should be the scope of the marketing department, should it deal with both strategic and operational marketing?
- Should marketing drive the products as in B2C or not?
- Should the same communication department be in charge of both corporate and product communication?
There are some very common questions above.
Organisation and governance
We will be forgiven for speaking of “organisation and governance”, as these words sometimes have different meanings in different companies. On the one hand, the word organisation refers both to the entity to be organised (as in ‘steering the organisation’) and to its mode of operation (as in ‘choosing an efficient organisation’). On the other hand, the word governance increasingly refers, beyond its strict definition linked to responsibility and equity, to the way in which the structure is organised to operate.
In terms of organisation and governance, the main questions concern, on the one hand, the clear definition of responsibilities and decision-making powers, i.e. in practice “who has the right to decide what and who is responsible for what” (in particular in the field of investment and technical decisions) and, on the other hand, the methods for ensuring coordination between the various players involved in the product market and competition actions
As far as internal cooperation is concerned, it is generally the job descriptions that specify who is supposed to be coordinating and cooperating with whom, but beyond that, it is up to line managers to ensure that this cooperation is effective: managers, in addition to the goodwill and time available, often make the difference in terms of internal cooperation.
Skills and skills development
With regard to skills and their improvement, this concerns both recruitment and training.
The high-tech B2B/B2G company has a vital need for specialists, even hyper-specialists, in its own technologies and products. Recruiting them, keeping them up to date in an often fast-moving technical world, and perhaps even more so, retaining them and preventing them from joining the competition is an absolute priority.
In this respect, most high-tech B2B/B2G companies recruit engineers and technicians at the right level, provide them with the necessary additional technical training, and practice internal promotion, so that the higher the level of responsibility, the greater the seniority in the company.
High-level external recruitment is actually quite rare, although there are some counter-examples. It should be noted that the main mechanism for retaining skills is generally not a salary premium: skills are reasonably paid in high-tech B2B/B2G, but passion for the job and technologies, the prestige of the company, a certain job security, the possibility of evolving through different positions or countries are generally better arguments than salary alone.
Process
In the area of defining processes specific to product/market/competition actions and their coordination with the company’s major processes (plans, budgets, investment, etc.), certain processes are frequently found in the B2B/B2G technical company in a totally or partially formalised manner. Thus, we frequently find processes:
- investment choices in products and markets
- arbitration within the product portfolio
- budgeting for expenditure throughout the product life cycle
- product development and technical qualification
- project development and qualification if the company operates on a project basis
- quality control
- product launch and discontinuation
- product life cycle management
